on site seo

upandcoming · Oct 21, 2012

Just a quick question for you seo professionals.

If you are taking on a new client with a fresh basic site with no work having been carried out at all on the site, what would be the first thing to do?

Would it be meta tags, descriptions, sitemap etc? or building 500 - 600 links?

Install analytics?

I am in a new business and struggling to understand this field!!

Many thanks

PurplePearCreations · Oct 21, 2012

upandcoming said:
Just a quick question for you seo professionals.

If you are taking on a new client with a fresh basic site with no work having been carried out at all on the site, what would be the first thing to do?

Would it be meta tags, descriptions, sitemap etc? or building 500 - 600 links?

Install analytics?

I am in a new business and struggling to understand this field!!

Many thanks

Get him to sign a contract with us ;-)

Is this your own website? post the URL so who ever comments can have a look.

If you want to learn then have a look here [URLNO="http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo"]http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo[/URLNO]
Its a good starting point and an excellent resource

I am sure if you have specific questions someone here will help you out.

David.

Ali-v-8 · Oct 21, 2012

*sighs* you ask a sensible question and get sent on a trek.

answer is - an SEO would discuss with you the needs of your website - This may include adding content and of course complimenting the metas titles to the content. they would also look at the coding making sure no major issues are the and that redirects are in place.

After all this is done then you would look at link building and improving social impact your website is having - this involves blogs articles, facebook, twitter and video (if applicable). None of this should be done before onsite is dealt with.

Please note: I have said this time and time again - If an SEO only concentrates on offsite without any regards for your onsite SEO walk away - they are building your SEO on Sand instead of Rock and when Google rains down its new algorithm 99% of the time your website will be washed away.

kim_kitchener · Oct 21, 2012

What exactly does your customer want their site to do.
Are they prepared to wait whilst you do the SEO linkbuilding, directory submissions e.t.c. as this is a long term strategy and you will not see results overnight.

If they are looking for quicker results then you need to go social.

webgeek · Oct 21, 2012

On-site and link building can be done simultaneously.

If it's a small business on a small budget, I'd start with the metas and link building straight out of the gate. Then work on getting analytics and goal tracking set up. Finally, content and conversion rate optimisation would be looked at, a bit further down the road.

Going from nowhere to top 5 rankings takes time, so get the clock ticking early by starting on the link work straight away!

Ali-v-8 · Oct 21, 2012

Actually @Webgeek i have to disagree with you on the timeline - metas, H1'a and content and basically everything onsite must be done first - no point in linking to a site without them in place first - you would end up devaluing the inbound links effect. (unless i am mistaken in what you mean)
Title + description + h1 + content = good landing page - miss one out or if they dont compliment each other then its less effective.

OldWelshGuy · Oct 21, 2012

PurplePearCreations said:
Get him to sign a contract with us ;-)

Is this your own website? post the URL so who ever comments can have a look.

If you want to learn then have a look here [urlno="http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo"]http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo[/urlno]
Its a good starting point and an excellent resource

I am sure if you have specific questions someone here will help you out.

David.

If that were to happen the thread would have been pulled, as free members are not currently allowed to ask for a site review. All site reviews must be requested in the site review area

Metalfrogboss · Oct 21, 2012

upandcoming said:
Just a quick question for you seo professionals.

If you are taking on a new client with a fresh basic site with no work having been carried out at all on the site, what would be the first thing to do?

Would it be meta tags, descriptions, sitemap etc? or building 500 - 600 links?

Install analytics?

I am in a new business and struggling to understand this field!!

Many thanks

Personally, I always ensure on site factors are covered off, then begin link building. There are ethical specifics I would look at and this ensures solid strategy for online marketing in general. PM if you need any free advice. I am not on here to sell our services.
Best regards
Chris

webgeek · Oct 22, 2012

Ali-v-8 said:
Actually @Webgeek i have to disagree with you on the timeline - metas, H1'a and content and basically everything onsite must be done first - no point in linking to a site without them in place first - you would end up devaluing the inbound links effect. (unless i am mistaken in what you mean)
Title + description + h1 + content = good landing page - miss one out or if they dont compliment each other then its less effective.

I've never read/observed anything to show inbound link value is based upon on-page factors.

Links exist independent of destinations and inherently carry weight, based on many variables like page authority, writing quality, relevance.

On-page factors exist independently of off-page links and determine a page "quality score" (to borrow terms from Adwords).

As one improves/increases, rankings should go up. As the other improves/increases, rankings should go up.

There's no need to do either in a certain order as they're not dependent, to my knowledge, though I'd welcome seeing the case studies to the contrary, as it would be a new one on me

CBIL360 · Oct 22, 2012

A very sensible question, usually when we start doing SEO for a client we should check whether some work has been done before or not, what is age of website, url structure, uniqueness and quality of content. Checking whether it has been penalized before or not, brand awareness, usability, speed of website etc

Metalfrogboss · Oct 22, 2012

Absolutely

Ali-v-8 · Oct 22, 2012

Google has a strategy for adwords as you pointed out that also is part of their website optimisation program - it tells you how to set up your pages and layout for maximum effect.
Now I know this is for adwords, but do you think that these factors are ignored when crawling.
When you link into a page a spider follows that link and for example lets say you in bound link was for the term "compensation claim" - would you not then assure that the landing page for that link had the term in the Title, H1, Description and content. ? Would the spider not then class that as a quality, valid link as opposed to a a landing page where the term is not found.

If I am making this sound complicated, it shouldn't be - I can only assume your looking at this from a different angle.

webgeek said:
On-page factors exist independently of off-page links and determine a page "quality score" (to borrow terms from Adwords).

webgeek · Oct 22, 2012

No, I don't believe that Google looks at the landing page quality score to determine the value of the IBL. Look at Ahrefs and others who assign values to links:
- build a link to a page
- look at the value of that link
- tweak the page
- the value of that link hasn't changed

I do believe that Google combines landing page quality score + inbound link weight in determining where to rank that page for related terms.

So, if you later tweak the on-page, your rankings could go up.

To illustrate this point, I've built links to 'under construction' type holding pages before, and had them rank for terms without any real content. Once the site was live and content was indexed/ranked, suddenly then the page shot upward.

Would those pages have shot up further if the content was in place before the links? I doubt it.

Ali-v-8 · Oct 22, 2012

OK - Lets look at this and give it some food for though.
If a site creates a link to an non existent page - What happens? - The website delivering the link suffers. (fact - See dead links).
With this in mind would you say that Google has a way to determine if the link lands or not?
If Google spend billions on analytic systems that show page drop off and follow the traffic what do you think they do with that compiled information?
When you do a "link:" search why do you think Google only shows certain links? (although lately god knows who and what they show).

webgeek · Oct 22, 2012

There's a monumental difference between having a 404 link and a link to a page of varying quality. Apples and orangutans.

heddwyn · Oct 23, 2012

Hi,

assuming a proper keyword research has been done...
1. Install analytics and perform a techincal on-page SEO evaluation
2. Improve the website structure and internal linking
3. Optimise content and title tags, prevent keyword cannibalisation
4. Optimise descriptions and add authorship markup to improve the CTR.
5. Social signals
6. Link building

Check rankings, find weaknesses, adjust and repeat.

Ali-v-8 · Oct 23, 2012

Thank you - thats what I been saying

oppa · Oct 24, 2012

heddwyn said:
Hi,

assuming a proper keyword research has been done...
1. Install analytics and perform a techincal on-page SEO evaluation
2. Improve the website structure and internal linking
3. Optimise content and title tags, prevent keyword cannibalisation
4. Optimise descriptions and add authorship markup to improve the CTR.
5. Social signals
6. Link building

Check rankings, find weaknesses, adjust and repeat.

You can't do better than this

I do exactly the same thing with all sites of my clients.

jassonwater · Nov 1, 2012

You need to do the On page SEO first, just follow some few steps like
Complete Title Tags
Create Meaningful Content
Utilize Internal Linking
Plan a Clean Navigational Structure
Always Use Image Alt Tags

and after that you can do the promotion for your website

emma dcosta · Nov 2, 2012

It depends upon what your client is looking for and what you think can be the best strategy to optimize the website as per site's content and requirements

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